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Aspects of the Cannibalism Controversy: Comments on Merrilee Salmon Wichita State University Libraries SOAR: Shocker Open Access Repository Robert Feleppa Philosophy Aspects of the Cannibalism Controversy: Comments on Merrilee Salmon Robert Feleppa Wichita State University, [email protected] __________________________________________________________________ Recommended citation Feleppa, Robert. 1995. Aspects of the Cannibalism Controversy: Comments on Merrilee Salmon. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34, pp. 147-154. This paper is posted in Shocker Open Access Repository http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/handle/10057/3456 The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1995) Vol. XXXN; Supplement Aspects of the Cannibalism Controversy: Comments on Merrilee Salmon Robert Feleppa Wichita State University Professor Salmon argues that the controversies about Mead’s work and about cannibalism encourage healthy discus- sion of anthropological standards of evidence and definition, and provide an opportunity to consider the scientific status of anthropology. Her paper is broad in scope, concerned as it is particularly with how Arens’s criticisms make an impact across the discipline and apply to a number of general theo- retical controversies. I would like to look in somewhat more detail at some of the issues on which her discussion of the can- nibalism controversy touches. I Arens’s position is that despite the considerable literature on cannibalism, it has actually occurred infrequently in hu- man history, and has never been customary. His position is based on two premises: (1)There are few reliable eyewitness accounts, and none such by trained anthropologists. (2) The attribution of cannibalism is typically made of others in order to make one’s own group look better or more civilized and to rationalize various kinds of action. Many of Arens’s arguments involve finding ways to make the existing body of evidence compatible with his hypothesis. If the majority verdict of the anthropological community is to be trusted, Arens has over- stated his position: he has not established that ritual canni- balism has never occurred. His critical attitudes, in the words of one reviewer “amount to little more than a refusal to be- lieve any statement of the existence of cannibalism, combined with a variety of impeachments of the motives of those who re- port it” (Springer 1980, 148). But a number of anthropological commentators critical of Arens on this score agree that his work has made them much more careful about interpreting evidence for this phenomenon. (And some remain impressed by how much of the evidence for cannibalism is circumstantial.) The literature seems to bear out the truth of Professor Salmon’s assertion that Arens’s work has “shifted discussion 147 Robert Feleppa from how to interpret alleged episodes of cannibalism to ques- tions about how to define the practice and how to support claims that a group engaged in cannibalism” (Salmon 1995, 5). Still, there is reason to wonder whether this is a useful point of departure for philosophical discussion of anthropologi- cal standards of evidence. Professor Salmon seems to share concerns expressed by anthropologists involved in this contro- versy that the discipline’s empirical credibility is under scru- tiny. But one could ask why an arguably worst-case scenario should be cause for such concern. When we deal with a phe- nomenon so likely to encourage lying, or so ripe for use as pro- paganda, the problems of trusting informants will be particularly pressing. As Arens himself learned early in his re- search, people tend not to say that they themselves are canni- bals: it is typically attributed to strangers, enemies, or “primitives.” It is not surprising that people are uneasy about cannibalism or that it is the kind of thing that is particularly useful as a political smear. But does this incline us to think the problems of trusting and interpreting informants general- ize to the study of other cultural phenomena? One might say it is a particularly, but also peculiarly troublesome phenomenon. To answer this it will help to consider why this controversy has been so heated. Arens’s book places the challenge to canni- balism in the context of a controversy at the center of general theoretical developments in anthropology: Doctrines such as the cultural determinism of Boas and Mead were part of a reaction to what were perceived as racist and colonialist ten- dencies in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anthro- pology-tendencies implicit in assumptions such as that primitive societies were to be seen as evolving in the direction of advanced western ones. Arens, in fact, casts the easy accep- tance in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe of beliefs about New World cannibalism, based on highly questionable evidence, as intrinsic to an ideology supporting colonialism and the slave trade. The New World’s native inhabitants were portrayed as so bereft of human qualities, that enslavement was an improvement on their condition. One message Arens’s critique sends is that in believing so easily in cannibalism, an- thropologists are still carrying about the colonialist assump- tions of the likes of Livingstone (who, Arens remarks, “saw cannibals everywhere” [Rosenthal 1983, lo]). It can lead one to wonder in what other ways such attitudes are playing themselves out in the practice and application of anthropology. In addition to hitting at this particular sore point, the issue has potentially significant impact on the content of anthropo- logical theory because the questions whether cannibalism oc- curs or occurred and whether it was more prevalent in our past are seen by anthropologists as casting significant light on human nature. Also, it is quite embarrassing to find that the 148 Comments existence of something that has become such a commonplace of anthropological study can be so effectively questioned. This can be quite threatening to a discipline whose rationale is per- ceived, in some quarters still, as questionable. In this vein, when asked to explain why anthropologists should turn out to be so unscholarly in their acceptance of cannibalism, Arens suggests “that anthropologists have an implicit, possibly un- conscious, vested interest in maintaining the notion of canni- balism among exotic peoples. Cannibalism points to the fact that there are people so radically different from us that their social systems are worth studying” (Rosenthal 1983, 14). He adds that many of the other things earlier thought to sharply differentiate societies from us, such as acceptance of incest, have fallen by the wayside under more recent ethnographic scrutiny. I1 This controversy also brings attention to a number of epis- temological and methodological problems. Many anthropolo- gists regard as the central objective of their discipline the overcoming of their own preconceptions in a process of discov- ering the possibly radically different conceptions of other cul- tures. (This is often linked explicitly to the retreat from colonialism.) They argue about whether or not the cultural subjects’ conceptions should define the context in which a phenomenon is identified and studied, as well as about how to do this. Arens himself takes a clear stand on the “insider- outsider” controversy in discussing the matter of defining can- nibalism: Social action or ideas can only be appreciated in the context of the cultural system of which they form a part. In isolation the inter- pretation of such facts is sometimes meaningless and at other times misleading. (Arens 1979, 43) Members of other branches and schools of anthropology have a different attitude about the nature and importance of “context.” For instance, anthropologists following the ecologi- cal-materialist tradition of Leslie White, who are typically seen as opposed to the so-called “language-and-culture” tradi- tion of Boas, tend to downplay linguistic analysis, interpreta- tion, and the adoption or articulation of the cultural insider’s viewpoint. Arens himself is critical of ecologists and cultural materialists who ignore the cultural significance of cannibal- ism, as well as “classifiers” (in cultural and physical anthro- pology) who are content to categorize cannibalism according to culturally neutral features. But he, like Professor Salmon, is also critical of the structuralists and symbolists at the oppo- 149 Robert Feleppa site extreme, who strike many critics as being more concerned to ply intellectual constructs than attend to cultural facts. Some of these philosophical tensions emerge in a relatively recent cannibalism controversy in which Arens has not, to my knowledge, taken part directly, but reflects his concerns. It is about the so-called Windigo or Witiko psychosis-a culturally specific condition purportedly occurring among Northern Algonkians, in which the sufferer has an inexplicable craving for human flesh (Marano 1982; cf. Marano 1983, Brightman 1983, 1988). Some critics follow Arens’s lead in arguing that the phenomenon is largely an anthropological myth, resulting because anthropologists naively accept informant reports, not realizing that they should not be taken at face value. The re- ports might obscure other practices, for example when testi- mony of infant windigos serves to rationalize infanticide under extreme environmental conditions (Marano 1982, 389). Re- ports of the psychosis itself can be exaggerations designed to discourage contact with people who have committed acts of starvation cannibalism. That is, the reports indicate a fear that such people might be more likely to do it again,
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